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New Yorkers are fearing the impending April 2019 shutdown of the Manhattan to Brooklyn L subway line. The contract for Hurricane Sandy repairs spanning the train tracks between 8th Avenue and Bedford Ave, Williamsburg, was awarded two years ago and plan to last at least 15 months, ending by August 2020.

The issue has been a hot topic among local politicians who are generally pushing for alternative travel routes including other subway lines, a new inter-borough bus line, and expansion of select bus services.

The L train services over 400,000 commuters daily with at least 250,000 depending the line to travel between the connecting boroughs of Manhattan and Brooklyn.

75% – 85% of commuters will be shunted to other subway lines. The M and J lines connecting Manhattan and Brooklyn will bear the brunt the burden, with the G suffering on its connections going up to Queens.

The MTA admits 75% is the ideal target to avoid overcrowding. They have not yet released specific plans on how frequently trains will be running to accommodate all the new riders.

Only between 5% – 15% of riders are estimated to use a proposed inter-borough shuttle bus service. This is where plans get messy. THERE IS NO DIRECT SHUTTLEBUS ROUTE PLANNED IN BETWEEN 8TH AVENUE AND BEDFORD AVE.

As you can see, the shuttle buses will run from Grand St. L stop to no further than Prince St./Broadway. This means if you want to get from Bedford Avenue to 8th Avenue you will have to transfer 3 times in between shuttle buses, subways, and select bus service.

The rest of anticipated ridership will consist of ferries, bicycles, and taxis. The MTA has not yet released plans for increases in ferry ridership.

The Democratic Primaries this year fall on September 12, 2017. When you vote please pay close attention to the travel agendas of your city council candidates. Hopefully, local politicians can address this mess of a plan and fight to keep New York City’s subways running effectively and efficiently.

I know the seasonal sadness is kicking in because everything feels like a chore.

I have a ticket for NY Comic Con Thursday and I don’t really want to go. I had plans for a Mako Mori cosplay, but I don’t think I can afford to get my hair relaxed at the moment.

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It’ll probably cost around $100 in this city. I’m having trouble justifying dropping that amount on credit for hair, but I also already have my ticket and already have most of the outfit.

Decision-making is hard.

My ex said he like me because of my “emotional nakedness.” He was ER doctor. He wasn’t into unnecessary suffering, so he would often talk families into pulling the plug on their demented, elderly who were dying and in pain. He’d come home after his 14-hour long residency shifts, and he’d be too tired for sex so we’d spoon on his couch while he talked about who he “killed” that day. I loved him a lot, but it didn’t work out because he wanted to have babies.

I turn 25 in a month, and I’m thinking about going up to Ithaca for my birthday. I had my best birthday up there when I was 21. I want to relive the upstate experience, which mostly involves being drunk and communing with nature.

I had the SAT scores and leadership cred to get into Cornell, but I didn’t apply. Instead I went to Cornell’s bastard sister school, Wells, because I wanted to surround myself with people I was better than. It was a decent strategy until I got horribly depressed and failed a literature final and then dropped out.

I applied to CUNY after that, for the very flippant reason I was dating a guy in NYC, but then Wells withheld my transcript because they mistakenly believed I owed them money. That eventually got worked out, and now I live in NYC, but I still haven’t gone back to school.

I miss driving, but I do not miss car insurance premiums.

I was once involuntarily hospitalized for marking a “5” on a 1-5 survey in a medical study. The question was something like, “How often to do you think about death?” I tried to explain to the doctors that mostly I got lazy towards the end of the survey and there were legitimate philosophical reasons for thinking about death, and they wrote down in the report that I was “being defensive.” I shut up when I realized things were going poorly and then they said I was, “guarded and evasive” and being “purposefully vague.” I lived a lifetime of Kafka novels that week.

While I was there, one of the many horrible things that happened was when they strapped a schizophrenic, Korean girl named Jacqueline down, just for calling a nurse a “bitch.” They kicked me out of my room so they restrain her to my bed. The entire time she kept screaming for Eddie; she had a tattoo of his name on her ankle surrounded by roses. It’s kinda sad and romantic—being in love with a made-up person.

American society is supposed to be civilized but we are still really barbarians.